Misc. Indy

The bad news was that Tay had to work this week while I came to visit. However, the good news was that his slate of cases was really light for the week between Christmas and New Years so he was generally able to take off around 3 or 4 every day. The few normal work days I was there, I'd get up early with Tay, make coffee and quickly fry up some eggs and bacon or sausage for us for Breakfast.

The first day Tay worked, I drove him to the office so I could use his car. I drove to Target and bought some more things for Germany and also a new shower curtain for the back side of Tay's standing tub.  After I picked him up, we walked through his neighborhood to Goose the Market, a new development meant to replicate the old pedestrian storefronts. Really really good sandwiches, although it was unclear that we were going to pay an extra $2 uncorking fee for the bottles of craft beer we drank off the shelf.

We spent a lot of time decorating, actually, trying to figure out how to use what Tay described as his bar room. It took us a few hours to assemble a new heavy wooden shelf Tay ordered and had delivered, and while he was gone one day, I took the liberty of totally re-arranging the space. We walked in and said "that's....an idea [but not a desirable one]." We joked back and forth the whole trip about our differing ideas of what his concept of "modern speakeasy" meant.

One day I walked over through more fallen down neighborhoods to check out the local Habitat ReStore, but there was nothing that I would have dragged back over to Tay's.

Wednesday, New Years eve, Tay had a half day, so we drove out in search of a traditional Indy dish, breaded pork tenderloin in a sandwich. Coming from Germany, this is known there as schweinschnitzel. Like St. Louis, there was a large influx of German immigrants early in the city's history and the food culture persisted. But not just any tenderloin sandwich would do.

Tay picked me up at his place and we drove together to lunch at The Gaslight Inn. Tay told me that this was a place considered by many to be haunted, located as it was outside of one of the oldest cemeteries. Imagine, in the heart of the brick city, an ancient crumbling brick building, with shadowy rooms upstairs and a dusty bar complete with a doily covered piano.

This is entirely nothing like The Gaslight Inn of Indianapolis. There were a few old elements, a crumbling brick column in the center of the room, but the Inn was really nothing more than a woodsiding dive bar with some cute ghosts on the sign with the establishment name. Instead of dapper hipsters, the wide majority of the bar's patrons looked like blue collar regulars, and despite the pedegree and interest (the Gaslight Inn has been featured in many "haunted places" tv shows) probably most people come because they're regulars first, for the tenderloin sandwich second, and probably a scant scattering of ghosthunters.

Tay and I both ordered the sandwich, and split an order of onion rings, and we both washed it down with a cold bottle of budweiser. Huge sandwiches. I hate to say it, but they were pretty unremarkable. Except mine bled a ton of bright red blood all over the table, and Tay's sandwich floated sixteen inches above his plate until he sliced it in half with his knife. No, not really. It was good, but honestly there's little one can do with a flattened and breaded pork tenderloin to make it exceptional.

The funny thing was after we paid, Tay casually asked the server if we could take a look around. She gave him a strange look and mumbled something about needing to ask the manager. A few minutes later, there was a bald and lean gentleman, looked like late 50s or early 60s, standing by the table and asked to take a seat. This was the owner, a former bartender. He took us in, Tay still wearing his sharp suit from court, me in a heavy sweater. "Who are you with?" he asked, his eyes darting between the two of us. His serious and wary expression suggested that I should not reply, "Perkins, party of two."

It turned out that there were groups of people, ghost hunters, TV show makers, etc. who came out to the house to ghost hunt, and he thought we were one of them. What followed then was about half an hour of him talking about the place, the initial terrifying episodes ( a chalk line turned out missing which was never found), about how alcohol depletes the spiritual aura around a person (at this point, he pointed at Tay and said, "this guy, he gets it! He knows what I'm talking about!") since we were both listening politely and giving somewhat ambiguously encouraging nods to these kind of people in hopes they will top themselves. Anyway, he ran himself out and finally said that we would be welcome to come back and check the place out with a medium, a psychic he referred people too. He said that she could look at you and tell you who you are, not right now, but were in the past. And that she was going to the local univeristy. I regret asking about what degree she was pursuing. Anyway, convo me for the contact info.

After we extricated ourselves from Paranormal Pete's Pork and PBR, we walked over to the cemetery behind the restaurant. It was a big Jewish cemetery with very German names and a few really old gravestones. The oldest we found dated back from the early 1800s, which would not have been much longer after the founding of the city.  But it was cold as hell too, so we shuffled back to the car.

That night, I took Tay out to the Libertine, a cocktail bar close to the circle, where we had a few $10 very good, and strong, cocktails, before heading over to Chelsea's place. Chelsea lives with two other girls and they had a feminist Christmas tree where feminist icons were pasted to the ornaments. We drank a little more there before heading over to a house party of mostly the girl's friends, which were mostly a mix of recent graduates. I font think I was even the oldest guy there. Oddly, there was a photo booth in one of the rooms upstairs and every group got photographed.

When the ball dropped, I lead our group in Auld Lang Syne which apparently I was the only one at the party to remember the words, and we toasted with Corbel sparkling wine. We left shortly after since Tay was really tired and I was jet lagged as hell.

When we got back to the house, I fried up an entire package of bacon, which probably helped soften the blow of the booze, and after drinking lots of water, I stumbled off to bed. Actually, I hadn't drunk that much: a few cocktails, a few mixed drinks, and a swig of sparkling wine/engine degreaser.

So ended 2014, one of the most event-filled years of a very event-filled life.